1. Field of the Invention
This invention in one embodiment relates to a building material for covering the frame of a structure, wherein the building material is comprised of a building board having an extending flange adapted to engage an end of an adjacent board to provide a means by which to secure the building board within a system of building boards while improving the shear strength of the system in a cost effective manner.
2. Description of the Related Art
The cladding market uses building boards for covering the frame a structure. The market includes building boards of different materials; in particular, wood, ceramic, metal, plastic or composites of two or more of these. These boards are generally in the form of discreet planks or panels that must be placed adjacent to each other on the frame of a structure in order to cover the structure and thereby provide a protective and decorative covering. In order for this covering to be contiguous, the joints between boards must be treated to appear aesthetically pleasing. This treatment, however, is time consuming and can be expensive. Accordingly, what is needed is an improved building material having a jointing system that reduces the cost and improves the ease of installing building boards. There is also a need in the market for building boards that are, among other things, better at preventing water seepage between the joints, improving the joint strength between building boards, and enhancing the shear strength of the building board system.
Construction industries, such as a residential construction, prefer using nailable building boards for attaching to various types of framing, including wood and metal framing. However, hard, dense or brittle materials, such as ceramic, concrete, stone or thick metal are not nailable and must therefore be attached to wood or steel frames by some other means, such as by providing pre-drilled holes for nails. Drilling holes is time consuming and expensive, so there is a need to reduce installation cost by finding a means of nailing a non-nailable substrate such as ceramic or dense cement composite without pre-drilled holes.
When installing building panels, the panels are butted against each other such that their edges simultaneously cover a framing member. Each panel edge is fastened to the framing member with a row of nails, such that there are two rows of nails at each panel joint. This process is necessary to achieve a minimum level of shear strength as established by building codes. As a way of reducing installation costs, it would be advantageous to minimize the number of nails applied to a panel joint while obtaining comparable or improved shear strength performance as the building board system having two rows of nails at each panel joint.
Nailable materials, such as plywood or OSB panels, that have shiplapped edges may reduce the number of nails needed to merely connect panels together; however, two rows of nails are still needed at each joint of those products in order to maintain the minimum level of shear strength needed to satisfy building codes. For instance, wood-based, shiplapped panels are nailed with two rows of nails; one through the shiplap of the under lapping board and one through the shiplap of the overlapping board to avoid buckling under shear forces. What is needed is a joint treatment using only one row of nails that is resistant to buckling under shear load.
Shiplapped building boards made of fibercement are poor candidates for reducing the numbers of nails needed to connect boards together while maintaining the minimum level of shear strength. Fibercement boards are generally brittle and thus, the shiplapped edges of such boards are prone to breakage during shipment and installation. In addition, it is expensive to machine shiplap joints into the edges of a fibercement panel. What is needed is a means of treating the edges of a fibercement panel to make the edge of the panel less prone to breaking.
Building boards are sometimes sold with a factory applied finish. Often, the finish on these boards is damaged when the boards are nailed to framing members. The building board must be repainted or recaulked (or both) with a coating that matches the original finish. This is a time consuming process and adds cost. Thus, there is also a need for a means of nailing a building board to a framing member that minimizes the damage to the finished surface of the board.